A traitor's honour
by RedRosa1
Summary: Oneshot, a look into Peter Pettigrew's thoughts at the end of the PoA


**I decided to make another attempt at writing something serious, this is what I came up with. Roughly canon compliant look into the head of Peter Pettigrew, just after the big reveal. The views of the character are not necessarily the views of the author yada yada you know the drill.**

**BTW- I own nothing, but my right to free speech and freedom of expression **

**A Traitor's Honour**

He does try and defend himself. He tries but he can't, and there's a crazed, broken part of him laughing manically at the back of his head when Sirius tells him he should have died before betraying his friends. He had begged for death, but you can't wish your own life away, not if your captors are determined that you will live. Especially not if they have the magic to hold you down, or heal you up, or compel you to eat and drink. He had begged for death, but begging alone cannot make a thing so.

_Everybody breaks_, he tries to tell Sirius. _It doesn't matter how strong, or brave or loyal you are. In the end, everybody breaks. _The words die on his lips. He can't say them. But then, maybe Sirius already knows. There's a mad brittle edge to the man's grin, and Peter is reminded that the Blacks have a history of mental illness, that Sirius just spent twelve years in Azkaban. Peter recognises that look in his eye, he saw it in the mirror the last time he saw his own face, nearly thirteen years ago now. In his own way Sirius is as broken as he is. His sanity bleeding out through the cracks in his soul.

He did that. He let his friend take the fall for his crimes and now Sirius is just like him. Ruined, shattered. There's a part of him that takes a dark satisfaction in that. It should have been Sirius all along. He should have been secret keeper. If Sirius hadn't suggested the switch, if he hadn't said yes, and how the hell had Voldemort even known he was secret keeper anyway…. and Sirius had abandoned him. They all had. He still remembered that moment of utter hopelessness, lying in the hell of Voldemort's dungeons when he realized no-one was coming for him, no-one was going to save him. That he was going to die there, alone.

He remembers thinking all of those things and more in that moment when Sirius first confronted him. But it was despair as much as spite that had driven him to blow up that street, to this day he still wasn't sure whether or not it was a suicide attempt. Certainly he ought to have died in the explosion, and maybe his automatic shift into rat form had saved him in more ways than one, letting him lose himself in rat instincts until he'd half forgotten what it was to be human. It happens, if you spend enough time in your animagus form, human thought becomes less relevant, and animal instincts get prioritised. He idly wonders if Sirius had done something similar, buried the pain and the guilt and the nightmares under a dog's mind, there is something very canine about the way he keeps sniffing the air and snarling at him.

It doesn't matter though, none of it does. He looks at what remains of his childhood friends, at Remus's face, worn grey by more than a decade of care and grief, at the child, Harry, a stranger, with James's face, and James's hair, far thinner and less innocent than James had ever been, at Sirus who he had destroyed so utterly, and he knows. There are some things that cannot be forgiven, forgotten, come to terms with. Whatever the reasons may be.

He closes his eyes and casts his mind back to happier times. Four boys at Hogwarts, James and Sirius lead the way of course, Remus following, close enough to yank them out of trouble if need be, and then him, Peter, tagging along behind, desperate to be a part of things and always, always watching their backs.

There were cracks visible even then of course. Remus's condition was a strain on all of them, himself most of all. He was shy about taking his shirt off, but they'd all seen the scars, and they knew that his sickness would kill him one day, or get someone else killed. Knowing what the guilt would do to their friend, none of them could honestly say which was worse.

Sirius had a whole different set of issues. He didn't talk about his home life, not seriously at any rate, but there was a reason he spent as many of his holidays as he could get away with at James's house. Everyone knew what the Blacks were, that Sirius had grown up in a family of dark wizards. Most people forgot what that meant, most of the time the other marauders forgot what that meant. After all most of the time he seemed fine, a confident charming prankster just like James. It was just that every now and then he'd play a prank that was more cruel than funny, or how he'd once put someone in the hospital wing over a mild insult, or the way he'd casually describe how to perform a dark ritual and then be honestly surprised at people's horrified reactions, and they'd be reminded of what he was brought up to be.

The trouble is that people's moral compasses are culturally determined, and when you're young, the people who teach you about right and wrong are your parents. Sirius tries to be a decent person he really does, and maybe that tells them more than they want to know about how he was brought up. Considering the Blacks reputation, considering all the things that Sirius so carefully did not say, the way he went oddly quiet at the mention of torture, the way he had flinched at the thestrals, at a time when most kids were still seeing horseless carriages. He didn't tell so they didn't ask, maybe they should have, but they were kids and there were some truths they just weren't ready to face head on.

Remus was probably the only one of them that was willing to face real issues head on. He always was the most mature out of all of them. Probably because his condition had forced him to face up to some pretty ugly truths early on. Remus had been the only one who noticed when Peter had stopped wearing short sleeves. Maybe the others were just unobservant, or maybe they just weren't prepared to let themselves see, because admitting the hard truths would force them to grow up, and none of them wanted to grow up. Either way only Remus noticed, for all the good it did. To this day Peter could still give a hundred reasons why he did it, to this day he still couldn't say which of them is true, if any.

He'd been deeply insecure, he'd felt isolated, lonely, useless, weak, always on the periphery of James and Sirius's plans. He'd wanted to feel in control, feel pain, punish himself, reward himself, leave a mark, have a secret, just feel something other than numbness. It was all of those things and none of them. He'd just felt so alone, so useless, so empty. It was worst when he went home for the summer, home to an empty house and fixing his own dinners. His mother loved him, but she worked long hours and sometimes letters from his friends would be the only human contact he'd get for days. Remus had noticed, had confronted him, but he hadn't been able to make him stop, it had been a habit by that point, it made things easier.

Honestly it doesn't matter anymore, none of it does, the situation has gone way beyond Sirius's family, Remus's lunar problem, Peter's isolation and depression. Those were children's problems, born of forces beyond their control. Those children's problems had been eclipsed by adult failures, Peter's treachery, Sirius's reckless violence, Remus's descent into despair. James was the only one of them that wasn't broken, their shining leader, dashing, and brave, and ordinary, he was the one that held them together, the linchpin. His body hadn't even been cold before the rest of them had turned on each other like the wounded animals they were.

Even then, all those years ago the cracks were showing. They'd danced politely around the flaws in each other's facades, put up a front, daring anyone to comment on the bandages tied round their souls, but underneath they were still bleeding. Still back then at least they'd had each other. Been each other's support through the hard times. It hadn't held, somewhere along the road the cracks had widened into fissures that swallowed them whole, and now James was dead, and Peter was a traitor, and Sirius had just spent more than a decade in Azkaban, leaving Remus alone while the monster inside tore him apart month by month, and leaving James's son trapped, helpless, in the house of relatives who hated him. Everybody breaks and everything falls apart in the end.

It kind of makes sense in retrospect, that James was the only one of them innocent enough to choose a true herbivore, certainly it makes sense that he'd go for the "king of the forest", he always was a cocky bastard, but he shied away from blood in a way the rest of them didn't. He wasn't afraid to fight, but he never did dream of the kill. Sirius's form makes even more sense, he didn't trust his own moral compass, so he chose a form that would allow him to tie himself to someone else's, the loyal dog who is held back only by his master's command, but for all that still a predator, still a killer. Peter's was really the least obvious, logically he should have chosen a mouse, or a rabbit, something helpless and insecure. Instead he'd picked the rat, the survivor that would eat anything, do anything just to keep breathing, in the vague hope it might balance out his self-destructive impulses. Maybe he'd been right. In the end James had died as prey, Sirius was still the loyal dog trying to protect his leader's son, and Remus was the lone wolf dying without a pack. While Peter had fought, betrayed, eaten out of bins, abandoned all semblance of dignity, abandoned human thought, and survived. Survived everything. He should have chosen the mouse.

Peter wished he could be a rat again, missed the simplicity of his animagus form. If you gave in to the mind of your animagus form you didn't have to think, didn't have to care. Animals don't feel regret. All rats care about is food, predators, and making baby rats, they don't think about the past or the future, or the "might have beens". He could have hidden out as a human he supposed but in the end it was just easier to turn his back on humanity. Being human hurt too much.

But now he is human again, like it or not, and even if he were to escape and return to rat form Sirius has his scent now, and Peter doesn't think he's human enough anymore to let the trail go cold. There's nowhere left to run. Sirius grins at him viciously, and Peter wonders what he wants. Revenge, to see his best friend's killer, the traitor, scream in pain? Justice? Is there even such a thing? Does he want to hold him to account somehow, does he want an explanation? What could he possibly say? Honestly Peter suspects that Sirius doesn't even know what he wants. Remus looks even less sure, after all he'd just spent over a decade thinking of Peter as the hero and Sirius as the traitor, and now he had to completely readjust his world view. Add to that the fact that the wolf in him was probably just feeling happy to have its packmates back, and it's not surprising Remus looks unsure what to do next. Peter doesn't really know Harry well enough to get a proper read on him. Pretty much all of his memories of him are filtered through a rat's instincts and perceptions. All he knows for sure is that there's no point in expecting Harry to react like James would. He may look like his father, but even from a rat's perspective it's clear that the resemblance is only skin deep. Harry has seen the shadows of the world in a way that James never did, even at the end.

From what Peter can see, the boy appears to be a bit overwhelmed. Understandable really, he finds out about the mass murderer Sirius Black, then he finds out that the mass murderer is in fact his godfather and the only person in the wizarding world with the legal right to rescue him from the hell that was his relatives house, then he discovers that his godfather was the one that betrayed his parents and got them killed. Now he learns that the mass murdering traitor godfather was framed and his best friend's pet rat was responsible. It's impressive really that he's handling it as well as he is. One thing's for sure, turning him for the dementors kiss is the kind of ruthless decision James never would have made. Peter would rather they just killed him and used his body as evidence to prove Sirius' innocence. Maybe he is a coward, but he really can't face the prospect of reliving all the worst moments of his life. He wonders about the sort of mind that considers a good clean death less merciful than torture. He knows that Harry knows what the dementors are, what they do to a man. He knows that deep down the boy realizes he is not being merciful.

Still he suspects that Harry is still having trouble seeing him as a real human being, he's only really known him as a rat. All he knows about Peter Pettigrew the human being is a few offhand remarks people have made in passing, and this new revelation that he is directly or indirectly responsible for all the misery that Harry has had to go through. Peter is sure that somewhere in Harry's subconscious is a little voice saying that turning Peter in is his ticket away from the Dursleys, that it's worth it just for that. Humans have survival instincts too after all.

He doesn't blame Harry. Everybody breaks, Peter had done far worse when faced with that choice, with far less justification. He doesn't blame Harry but he wishes the boy had chosen differently. The fact that Harry is willing to turn anyone over to be tortured, even a traitor like him, confirms what he already knew. That Harry is as broken as the rest of them, another soul on his conscience. In a way this makes his decision easier.

When the opportunity arises he escapes. There is no way to answer for his sins, nothing he can possibly say or do that will make it okay but there is one last gift he can give the friends he betrayed, and that is to betray them further, remove one more shade of grey from this nightmare. He won't ask for forgiveness, won't switch back and forth like Severus, leaving open wounds on both sides. He will be a clear and honest enemy, someone they can hate, rather than undermining their resolve with his own crises of conscience. He has made his bed and now he will lie in it. It's the honourable thing to do and for what it's worth, he is still a Gryffindor, even after everything.

**AN- Because I always figured there had to be more to Peter Pettigrew. If he was just a coward why was he sorted into gryffindor? If he was evil, why was he such good friends with the rest of the marauders. Then I got to thinking about the principle that everybody breaks under torture, and we know that Voldemort likes torturing people, and I came up with this. Not saying Peter was right to sell out, just trying to examine the thought processes that might have eventually led to that scene at the end of the prisoner of azkaban.**


End file.
